Thursday, April 24, 2008

Speed Play

Today is day 10 of my 52 day build for Eagleman.  Today was a day of speed play.  Here is what went down:

Run: warmed-up for 15 minutes and then hit 6x 3min @ sub 5k speed (6:00-6:20/mile) with 2 min easy and then jogged home for a total of 8 miles in 64 minutes.

Swim: After a 1000 mixed warm-up I did an 800 TT in 12:07 (this is just a tad off my goal pace of 1:30/100).  I'll extend the distance of my TTs by 200 yards a week over the next 6 weeks and hopefully zero in on the goal pace.  I also did 8 broken 100s (50/25/25) all at 1:10-1:15/100 pace.

Bike:  On the Computrainer...15 min warm-up
10min@ 260 watts/5 min easy
5 min @ 300 watts/3 min easy
3 min @310 watts/2 easy
2 min @ 330 watts/3 easy
1:30@ 360 watts/3:30 easy
0:45@ 392 watts/4:15 easy
5min@255watts/5 easy
3 min@ 265 watts/2 east
10min@ 107 rpm
25 min warm down

nice!


Body Fat

Measured at 7.7% today.  This is considerably higher than the 4.3% I measured in the Cadence Kona Challenge and the 4.5-5% I typically measured last year.  I weigh 175 pounds so this implies that I need to lose a good 7-8 pounds to be race ready.  6 weeks to Eagleman--I'm on it!

Plan A/Plan B/Plan C

Update on my Kona qualification plans:

Plan A: I go sub 4:40 and qualify at Eagleman70.3 in early June.  I use IMAUS 5 weeks latter as a high quality brick workout but am careful/conservative on both the bike and run to minimize post w/o down time (this means rather than hammering out an 11 hour IM, I'll cruise to a 12:30-13 hour w/o and very little taper).   I'd then skip IMCAN and build for Hawaii.

Plan B: I don't qualify at Eagleman70.3.  I use IMAUS to experiment with the bike.  I'll ride VERY conservatively and try to focus on going sub 4 hours on the marathon.  I'd go into a maintenance mode/taper up to IMCAN and try to qualify there in late August.  Then maintenance cycle again and race Kona in October.

Plan C: I fail to qualify at IMCAN in Plan B above and end the year at the US National Long Course Championship in Nevada which I have already qualified for and entered.

Anders Update

So anders has recovered nicely.  The inflamation in his peroneal brevis tendon went away quickly with rest and advil.  By thursday he was able to bike and friday pounded out 8 miles.  He is fully mended.

Back at IMAZ, two of the guys that were behind him during lap 3 of the bike went on to run 4 hour marathons and qualify....oh what might have been!

Sunday, April 13, 2008

IMAZ--bad news

Well bad news here in Arizona.  Anders, at about 100 miles into the bike developed a severe pain in the outside of his right foot.  this pain was so great he had to ride in with his foot out of the shoe.  When he got into transition he was unable to put very much weight on his foot.  Upon leaving transition he had to sit down and the medical people worked on him for a while.  They diagnosed his problem is a severe inflamation of where the tendon that comes down the outside of your leg attaches to the outside of the foot.  The medical people and the race director strongly advised him to not continue on.  they told him that he would probably be injured for 6-12 months if he did.  Versus 2 weeks or so if he didn't continue.

This was brutal.  anders had rode his bike into 3rd place before the injury and entered transition still in 5th place despite not being able to put pressure on his foot over the last 12 miles of the bike.  He was just a minute or so out of 3rd.  He is obviously disappointed but I know will ultimately benefit from not really hurting himself on the run.  We are in recovery mode back at the hotel now....

IMAZ BIKE LAP 2

Anders came through lap 2 at 4:40:27 averaging 20.20 mph for the second lap--a slow-down of 0.8 mph from the first lap.  However, the conditions are much tougher now--sustained 20-25 mph winds and the temp is now 89 degrees with blazing sun.  Anders seemed in excellent spirits--he told me it was windy and gave me the hang 10 on the way out.

Significantly, with the exception of the leader (who was first overall, including pros, out of the swim) he made up time on all of his competitors on the second lap.  The standings after lap 2:

Kahn 4:06
Schmitz: 4:36
Evans: 4:38
CHRISTOFFERSON: 4:40

SCHMITZ I INCORRECTLY HAD AS BOSCH AFTER LAP 1.  So Anders passed 3 competitors and picked up 2-3 minutes on numbers 2 and 3.  He has a very good chance of being 2nd or 3rd at the start of the run......

That's my boy!

IMAZ Bike lap 1 Standings

here are the standings in the M18-24 AG after one bike lap:

Kahn   2:24
Melnuk  2:36
Bosch  2:43
Evans  2:45
Parry  2:46
Rogers 2:49
CHRISTOFFERSON  2:50